The West's Favourite Dictators: When Democracy Only Matters When It's Convenient
- Nuraiah Binte Farid
- Nov 14, 2025
- 4 min read
When Western leaders lecture the Global South about democracy, they conveniently forget who’s on their speed dial. Saudi Arabia jails women’s rights activists but still hosts G7 CEOs. Egypt tortures dissidents and gets rewarded with U.S. military aid. Bangladesh holds a sketchy election, and Washington calls it “strategically important.” Apparently, democracy is sacred, until someone finds oil, minerals or a naval base nearby.
For decades, the West has marketed itself as the world’s moral compass. But behind the flag-waving speeches about “freedom” and “values”, the real foreign policy reads more like a clearance sale on principles. Every sanction, handshake, and “values-based partnership” comes with a quiet asterisk: terms and conditions apply.
The Fine Print: Democracy with Conditions (it's a bit oversimplified)
The West’s defense of democracy often depends on convenience.. Washington sanctions Myanmar’s generals while sharing champagne with Riyadh’s princes. Brussels condemns Dhaka’s crackdown but signs multi-billion-euro trade deals with one-party Vietnam.
It’s not democracy they defend, it’s access, alignment, and oil.
Reports like Freedom House’s 2025 Democracy Index warn of “democratic backsliding.” What’s rarely mentioned in how profitable that backsliding can be.. American and European firms continue selling surveillance tech, tear-gas canisters, and crowd-control gear to the very governments being scolded in press conferences.
When journalists ask why, diplomats reply with a word that explains everything: strategic. Translation: “We know they’re repressive, but they’re our repressives.”
The Strange Exception—When Dictators Become Allies
“If he’s our dictator, he’s fine.” That line, once a cynical Cold War joke, is now foreign policy standard operating procedure.
Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, once a pariah after journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, got a Biden fist-bump because gas prices spiked. Egypt’s President Sisi receives $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid every year (U.S. Department of State, 2024), despite jailing more journalists than any other African country. Bangladesh faces visa sanctions for one month, and trade access is praised the next because Washington suddenly needs a logistics hub near the Bay of Bengal.
Consistency? Optional. Even U.S. policy analysts quietly admit “democracy promotion” has become a geopolitical subscription plan: pay monthly, cancel anytime. — Nuraiah Binte Farid
The Soft-Power Mirage
The West markets morality like a Netflix series: glossy, emotional, and algorithmically targeted. But beneath the cinematic montages of “freedom” lies a brutal calculation of who deserves empathy.
Western media will run week-long coverage of Iranian protesters (rightly so) but barely mention crackdowns in Dhaka or Colombo. The Gaza civilian death toll trends for a day, while Ukraine’s dominates the news cycle for months. The algorithm of empathy is broken, and it’s political.
Even the global institutions that claim neutrality have learned the PR game. The IMF preaches “good governance” to South Asia while quietly approving loans that reinforce ruling parties. The World Bank funds “resilience projects” that often enrich the same elites responsible for instability.
As one Southeast Asian diplomat told The Economist, “The West doesn’t export democracy anymore, it franchises it selectively, like Starbucks.”
The Global South's Reality Check
But here’s the twist: the Global South has finally stopped pretending. South and Southeast Asian governments are no longer swallowing lectures written in Washington and Brussels. They’re improvising their own playbooks.
India buys cheap Russian oil while courting U.S. defense ties. Malaysia criticises Western silence on Palestine, even if it ruffles feathers in Europe. Indonesia flirts with both BRICS and Tesla. Bangladesh plays China and the West off each other like a seasoned poker player.
They’ve learned that moral sermons don’t pay bills, but multipolar pragmatism does. The new foreign-policy motto is brutally efficient: we’ll take your aid, not your attitude.
This isn’t rebellion; it’s self-interest. For once, the Global South isn’t being “anti-Western”. It’s just playing the same game the West has always played, but on its own terms. — Nuraiah Binte Farid
The Youth Factor: Calling the Bluff
Here’s what the old elites didn’t see coming: Gen Z isn’t impressed by the double standards. Across South Asia, students are connecting the dots between domestic repression and global hypocrisy.
Bangladeshi youth protesters livestream police violence while tagging EU and UN. Nepali students build a digital parliament on Discord to elect leaders when their government collapses. Indonesians turn anti-corruption rallies into nationwide accountability drives.
They understand that soft power cuts both ways. The same global spotlight that Western states use to shame others can now be weaponized back at them. For every lecture about “human rights,” there’s a viral thread asking, “And what about Yemen?”
Democracy as a Luxury Good
Democracy today feels like an Apple product marketed to everyone, affordable to few. The West treats it as a brand asset, not a belief system. The same governments that preach accountability at summits will sign arms deals with monarchies, ignore war crimes, and silence whistleblowers under national-security laws.
The uncomfortable truth? The real crisis of democracy isn’t in the Global South, it’s in the boardrooms and situation rooms that treat morality like a tradable commodity.
If democracy were truly universal, it wouldn’t need exceptions. If freedom were genuinely valued, it wouldn’t depend on oil prices.
So maybe it’s time to retire the sermon. The world no longer needs democratic messiahs; it needs consistent partners. Until then, “values-based foreign policy” will keep meaning what it always has: whatever works this quarter.
Because let’s be honest, if the West truly believed in democracy, it wouldn’t need to pick favorites.
Further Reading/References:
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/2025-03/FITW_World2025digitalN.pdf
https://www.sipri.org/publications/2025/sipri-fact-sheets/trends-international-arms-transfers-2024
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/27/democracy-in-retreat
https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators
Comments